


Stepping into the Rain

by ASheepsLife



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben is a restless soul, I am having a Weird(TM) time and this was the result, M/M, childhood friends to almost lovers?, idek folks, please enjoy, sometimes two people need a little distance to find each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27945518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASheepsLife/pseuds/ASheepsLife
Summary: Ben might finally be ready to come home.
Relationships: Caleb Brewster/Benjamin Tallmadge
Comments: 11
Kudos: 7





	Stepping into the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know. I was listening to "Call If You Need Me" by Vance Joy and somehow this happened.

Caleb was packing up the last of the tools when his phone lit up with the picture for Ben’s contact, the one he’d complained so vocally about. It showed Ben with a truly ridiculous amount of hay tangled in his hair, color high in his cheeks, and even though it wasn’t actually in the frame, anyone who knew about it would confirm that Ben’s expression was an appropriate one for a man clutching a furious hen enraged at having been captured in such an undignified manner. It had been taken at the harvest festival, during one of the few times Ben had been back over the years, and it never failed to bring a smile to Caleb’s face.

_“I look like a scarecrow! And not even a particularly original one.”_

_“I know. It captures you perfectly.”_

Caleb hit accept, leaving the phone on the shelf above the workbench.

“Tallboy! I’m just closing up, sorry about any potential racket. And you’re on speaker, so watch what you say.”

A snort travelled down the line.

“You got a lot of sensitive company in the shop?”

“I could have,” he shot back, sweeping the worktop with a brush. “I’ll have you know I’m very popular with the local strays.”

“That’s because you keep feeding them.” Ben’s voice was faintly amused.

“Ah, you know me. Big ol’ heart.”

“I know,” came the reply, incongruously soft for the way they were bantering.

_“What you did showed a tremendous amount of compassion.”_

_Susannah Tallmadge’s voice was as gentle and sure as the hands with which she was tending to his multitude of scrapes and abrasions. Even as scrappy and fearless a fighter as nine-year-old Caleb was, the three older boys that had been been pelting a lame fox with stones still outmatched him._

_It wasn’t the first time Ben’s mother had had to patch him up._

_“Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness,” she continued as Caleb’s insides rebelled at the infliction of such gratuitous suffering._

“So how’s things in the world of polymaths?” Caleb asked, wanting to bridge the oddness of the moment. “Already got your next tour lined up?” Yale might be Ben’s home university, but it sometimes seemed to Caleb that he spent more time in other parts of the world than he ever did in Connecticut.

“Of a sort.”

“Yeah?” Picking up his phone and jamming it between ear and shoulder, Caleb tried to ignore the dull ache that still tugged at his heart at the thought of Ben taking off once more. It wasn’t exactly rational, seeing as it didn’t really make a difference if Ben was across the Sound or in Buenos Aires - the distance seemed unbridgeable either way. “Where’re you headed this time? You haven’t been to Europe in a while, eh?”

“Actually…” At Ben’s hesitant tone Caleb paused in the process of getting the broom off its hook on the wall. So there _was_ something going on. “I was thinking something a little closer to home this time.”

Caleb felt the weight of Ben’s words settle around him. He took hold of his phone again and pressed it to his ear. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Ben said after a moment freighted with years of history.

_“I wish you could stay longer.”_

_They were sitting on the Brewsters’ porch. Well, Caleb’s porch now. Everyone else had already left, and Ben was bound to return to New Haven in two days’ time._

_Caleb almost regretted his words even before looking over and seeing Ben with his eyes cast down into the whiskey Caleb had brought out once it was only the two of them. Usually, he managed to keep from voicing his most impossible hope. It didn’t do any good, saying these things. But he’d just buried his uncle, dammit, and it was only the truth._

_“I could arrange to stay until next week,” Ben said eventually, swirling his tumbler a little before looking up at Caleb. “That should be doable.”_

_And Caleb could see in his face all of the sincerity and guilt with which he was making the offer and all of the pain it caused him to know it wasn’t enough._

_He looked away, into the gathering dusk._

_“Ah, we’ll see how it goes, yeah?” he replied, bumping Ben’s shoulder lightly with his own._

_After a moment, Ben transferred his glass to his left hand and wound the fingers of his right through Caleb’s, their palms resting together warm and familiar._

Caleb turned on his heel and made his way out of the shop’s big open doors, down to the little dock out back.

“Where are you right now?” he asked as he went.

“Down at the rocks.”

Not a surprise. It was a favorite spot of Ben’s, that small promontory, less favored by beachgoers thanks to its rocky nature and the chill wind that seemed to unceasingly come in off the sea.

“At the risk of sounding like your mother, God rest her: Don’t catch your death down there.” Ben had the tendency to forget his surroundings when he got lost in his head.

“I’m fine for now. I’ve got Lucas’ sweater.”

Out of the pool of clothes they’d shared over the years, that particular bulky, cable-knit affair had ultimately migrated to Ben’s wardrobe. Caleb’s uncle had never worn it, claiming it to be too warm, and Caleb had eventually renounced it for the same reason.

Reaching the water, Caleb leaned his elbows on the wooden rail.

“You know, it’s no wonder your love life is so desolate. People take one look at that thing and assume you’re eighty years old.”

“Fuck off,” Ben retorted without heat. “This sweater is a regular people magnet.”

“Yeah? Pick up anyone’s grandpa lately?”

“You’re a terrible person,” groaned Ben.

Caleb grinned.

“So are you for laughing.”

“I’m not,” Ben laughed.

Night was coming on quick, even more so with the cloud cover, and looking out over the Sound Caleb imagined he could almost see lights winking to life on the other shore.

_Caleb kissed Ben exactly once._

_They grew up together, almost literally more often than not. They were at each other’s place so much they practically lived there, prompting their friends to start joking that the two of them were married before any of their other likely candidates could get the chance._

_Caleb had loved Ben so indubitably for so long he couldn’t tell at what point he’d fallen in love, and while he didn’t think Ben returned those feelings, his love for Caleb was never in doubt. Not even when Caleb threw caution to the wind, one evening on one of Ben’s rare visits to Setauket. Sitting on the washed up log they’d spent so many summer nights on, one side of his face was warmed by their crackling fire, the other cold from the familiar hand that hadn’t found its rest there, encouraging or gentle or demanding._

_Ben’s face when Caleb pulled away was desperately unhappy._

_“I can’t,” he’d whispered. “I’m sorry.”_

_“I know, Tallboy.” Caleb gave him a smile that didn’t feel much happier than Ben’s expression, tried to ameliorate it with the ghost of a careless shrug. “Had to try.”_

_It took a while, but eventually their hands found each other in the scant space between their bodies._

So they’d arranged themselves with the fact that Ben couldn’t love Caleb in a way that meant calling Setauket home. Caleb knew it wasn’t personal. Ben had always been so restless, wanting - _needing_ \- more from life. He and Annie were frighteningly alike that way. One of Caleb’s most vivid memories was still the night the four of them took out his uncle’s beat-up old Chevy, Abe and Annie in the back, Ben in the passenger seat urging him to go faster down the unlit back roads. 

It was never in question that Caleb would one day take over his uncle’s woodworking business-slash-repair service. Due to the early onset of his illness that day had effectively come sooner than anticipated, but Caleb, having been to sea for a number of years at that point, had never minded returning to Setauket more indefinitely.

Ben however - chafing at his confines, driven by a hunger for knowledge, for action, for _change_ \- had, if he did come back, only ever been _visiting_ , or _stopping by_. Staring out across the water, Caleb could no longer quell the hope that that _can’t_ might be changing.

“So. What was this you were saying about your travel plans?”

“Well, I’m not sure I would call it travel,” Ben answered, voice cautious. “It’s not exactly a great distance between New Haven and Setauket, after all.”

That depended entirely on how you measured it.

“No,” Caleb agreed quietly. “No, it ain’t.”

They lapsed into silence, broken only by the wind rustling past at Ben’s end.

Finally, Ben spoke.

“Caleb, I...I’m thinking about coming home.”

The emotion thick in his voice slid between Caleb’s ribs, nestling in his chest.

“Yeah?”

He could tell Ben was smiling by how he sounded on the phone.

“Yeah.”

Caleb felt the first drops of rain hit his face.


End file.
